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He stood to the side of the door, popping one of those candies he seemed very fond of into his mouth. As I walked in, I caught a whiff of cinnamon and the click of it against his teeth.
“What exactly happened yesterday?” I asked. “You went to that chop shop place, right?”
“Of course.” Slade dropped into one of the scattered chairs and leaned back, propping his feet on the edge of the table in a way that made the leg of his khakis slide up to reveal the metal rod of his prosthetic. Just like I remembered from high school, he showed no sign of self-consciousness. He might even have been showing it off purposefully to see if I’d react to it.
“Turns out your thief wasn’t a customer of that particular shop,” he went on in a casual tone. “He must have taken it someplace else. Or he knew someone with a special hankering for an old Malibu. We’ll figure out which. It’ll just take a little time to get through all the possibilities.”
“That makes sense.” I’d meant to start my perusal of the office, but Slade chose that moment to tuck his hands behind his head, making the muscles in his arms and shoulders flex to impressive effect. For a second, I found it hard to drag my gaze away from his dark, twinkling eyes and well-built body.
Slade wasn’t as brawny as Logan, but he had an impressive physique in his own right. And those sly eyes combined with his bright grin and his carefree personality had drawn girls to him like bees to nectar back in high school. I recalled Summer catcalling him in the halls once when he’d been showing off his nimbleness on that manufactured leg, back when we’d been measly sophomores to his superior junior status.
I wasn’t here to pursue a hookup, let alone anything more than that. I didn’t want to feel the twang of desire that shot through me before I finally yanked my eyes away—but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t happened.
I had more important things to focus on right now. And the last thing I needed was to get a crush on Logan’s best friend.
Wandering around the table, I let my fingers trail over the surface, shifting a few of the papers lying there to an angle that made them easier for me to read. A quick glance showed nothing all that exciting: a class schedule for a student whose name I didn’t recognize, a sketch that didn’t look like much more than a few overlapping rectangles to me, a recent receipt for a video game. I wasn’t sure whether the last was evidence or just one of the Vigil guys’ personal purchases.
“Are you sure that youwillbe able to track down my car now that you’re on the case?” I asked.
Slade tsked his tongue. “Don’t be doubting us already. We’ve got a reputation to maintain here—we’ll get it done.”
I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows at him. “You’re awfully confident. How long have you guys been at this whole Vigil thing anyway?”
He shrugged. “Since pretty soon after we started classes here, so about a year and a half now.”
Honest curiosity itched at me. “How did you even get started doing something like this? Most people don’t suddenly decide, ‘Hey, I’m going to become a crusader tackling all the crimes on campus.’”
Slade’s grin stretched wider. “You should know something about being a crusader, shouldn’t you, Madelyn?”
The lilt with which he said my name sounded almost flirty—enough to make me blush. Or maybe that was just residual embarrassment being reminded of my many crusades in high school.
Not that I was ashamed of the stands I’d taken… but I could definitely have tackled certain conflicts with a more polished approach.
“I asked you the question first,” I retorted.
Slade laughed. “Fair. It’s not that thrilling a story, as much as I’d like to wow you with grand tales of daring-do. We actually picked up a few sort-of cases back in high school. Opportunities landed in our lap, and we found that we were good at putting pieces together and figuring out the solutions to these kinds of problems. We did little investigations like the kids we were, and when we came here, we decided to make more of a commitment to getting shit done.”
I blinked at him, momentarily forgetting my quest to unravel what they were up to now in my surprise about the past. “You were solving crimes back in high school?”
“Sure. We just kept it more on the down-low then. Lots of other things keeping us occupied. Remember the English teacher Miss Otterbine?”
At my nod, he continued. “Well, someone stole the mini-refrigerator she kept in her room, and she couldn’t go to the school about it because technically the appliance wasn’t allowed outside of the teachers’ lounge. She only had it in there to keep backup lunches for students who couldn’t afford them. So we decided to find out who’d taken off with it, and we did. She got her fridge back, and the culprit got a very stern talking-to.” He winked at me.
I opened my mouth to ask for more details about their high-school exploits, which had gone on right under my nose, but Slade whipped his feet off the table and straightened up, fixing me with an intent look. “So, Maddie—do you mind if I call you Maddie?”
I got a weird twinge thinking of how natural it sounded from his mouth—and how natural it’d used to sound from Logan’s. “Go for it,” I said.
“What areyouoccupying yourself with these days? You said you were going to some medical research lecture—am I right in thinking you’re pre-med?”
I was a little surprised that he’d remembered that brief part of our conversation last night—but then, he had come to my defense when Logan had been hassling me about my plans.
“You’ve got it,” I said. “I’m majoring in biology.” I paused. I knew Logan had gone into something to do with computers—his dad talked about it now and then with a note of pride, since he had enough trouble wrangling anything outside of his accounting software—but I had no idea about his friends. “What about you?”
“World languages with a specialty in linguistics.”
My eyebrows rose. “World languages as in plural? Don’t people usually pick just one?”
His chuckle resonated through the room. “I might look like a jock, but Idoknow languages. I got English and Spanish from home, and I taught myself a fair amount of Italian and French all on my own, enough to be fluent now.”
